Edinburgh biotech outfit in tie-up with GE Healthcare

GARETH MACKIE

An Edinburgh-based specialist in “synthetic biology” is to take part in a research collaboration with industry giant GE Healthcare.

Synpromics, housed at the city’s BioQuarter life sciences incubator, said the tie-up will see it create a “toolbox”, using GE Healthcare’s Chinese hamster ovary cell platform, aimed at helping to develop a range of biopharmaceuticals, including difficult-to-manufacture proteins.

GE Healthcare is paying the firm an undisclosed fee to access its technology and will have the rights to commercialise the platform.

David Venables, chief executive of Synpromics, said: “We are delighted to be working with GE Healthcare, a world-leading technology innovator, to develop and commercialise our novel synthetic promoter platform.

“We believe our synthetic promoters will provide a much more efficient production system and we’re aiming to help GE Healthcare boost efficiency for its biopharma customers.”

Morgan Norris, general manager for upstream and cell culture at GE Healthcare’s life sciences division, added: “We are happy to be able to collaborate with Synpromics on developing enhanced tools for manufacturing biologics and thereby support our customers in their production efforts.”

Synpromics was founded in 2010 to commercialise technology developed by Michael Roberts in the “highly disruptive” field of synthetic biology – which gives researchers the ability to create man-made DNA sequences in the development of cures for conditions such as haemophilia and hereditary blindness.

Last year the firm secured a £2.1 million cash injection from private equity firm Calculus Capital to develop its gene therapies.